Eric Cantor Announces Anti-Choice House Vote at March for Life

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor speaking at Wednesday's March for Life. (C-SPAN)

Despite the brutal cold that enveloped Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the anti-choice activists who flooded the National Mall for the annual March for Life had a good day, one that began with a tweeted blessing from Pope Francis, and was capped off with a promise from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for a vote next week on HR 7, a sweeping anti-choice bill that would, among other things, create tax penalties on some who use their own funds to pay for abortions.

At a rally on the Mall preceding the march—an annual protest held on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion—March for Life President Jeanne Monahan read the pope’s tweet to the largely Catholic crowd: “I join the March for Life in Washington with my prayers. May God help us respect all life, especially the most vulnerable.”

Then she introduced Cantor, saying he had delayed his “flight to Israel” in order to be with the marchers. News reports actually showed Cantor scheduled to lead a congressional delegation to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, but either way the point was that Cantor changed his travel plans to address the anti-choice activists.

The majority leader did not disappoint his audience, drawing big cheers with his promise of a floor vote on HR 7, titled the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a name opponents take issue with, since taxpayer funding for abortion has long been prohibited under the Hyde Amendment and related measures. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and other pro-choice members of the House contend that with its complicated tax-code penalties on both individuals and small businesses who purchase health insurance that includes abortion coverage, the ultimate aim of the bill is to make it difficult for insurance companies to provide abortion coverage, a fairly standard part of insurance plans, at all.

Cantor, who faces a likely primary challenge from the right in his upcoming re-election campaign, lauded the activism of the marchers, talking of the “inalienable right to life” asserted in the Declaration of Independence in the context of abortion, and speaking of the “sanctity of life.” HR 7, he said, “will respect the morals and consciences of millions of Americans, and ultimately will save lives.”

“Getting this bill through the Senate, however, and signed by the president will be a much tougher task,” he continued. “But I can make you this promise: The people’s House will stand for life.”

He made a point of lauding the bill’s author, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who spoke next, accusing President Barack Obama of “using stealth, deception, and the coercive power of the state to promote abortion violence.”

Tax credits, such as the pre-tax dollars people are permitted to use for health expenses via health savings accounts (HSAs), in Smith’s view, amount to government subsidies. (In a press conference prior to last week’s mark-up of HR 7, Nadler suggested that the many houses of worship that enjoy tax exemptions might take issue with that construction, seeing as it would make them vulnerable to revocation of those exemptions under the First Amendment.)

Smith, however, is unfazed by such logic. “Under Obamacare,” he told the marchers, “billions of dollars, in the form of tax credits, are today buying abortion-subsidizing health insurance plans in exchanges throughout the country.”

Rounding out the roster of anti-choice members of Congress addressing the marchers was Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, who seemed to suggest that women facing unintended pregnancies should be made to bring their pregnancies to term because there aren’t enough babies available for adoption by infertile couples.

“Some pregnancies are unexpected, but no baby is unwanted,” Hartzler said. “Right now, one out of eight couples are having trouble getting pregnant, and hundreds of thousands are waiting in line for adoption—men and women who long to be called by those precious words, ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy.’ In 2007, there were only 18,078 infant adoptions in the United States, yet there were 1.2 million babies who never had the chance to live, to grow, to be part of a loving family who’s waiting for them, to welcome them home. This must change.”

After the rally, activists, many bearing “Defend Life” signs, passed out by the Knights of Columbus, marched from the Mall to the Supreme Court, where some held prayer vigils. A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was hoisted up in front of a banner for Benedictine College of Atchison, Kansas, while protesters chanted the Apostle’s Creed.

“Right now, one out of eight couples are having trouble getting
pregnant, and hundreds of thousands are waiting in line for adoption—men
and women who long to be called by those precious words, ‘mommy’ and
‘daddy.’

Then why don’t any of them adopt one of the 100K children currently available for adoption in the US alone?

http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/ Plum Dumpling

And those (couples) women having trouble getting pregnant, or staying pregnant, may opt for fertility treatment.

You know, that is where they insert embryos in the uterus, expect 6 to 8 of them to implant, and then abort all but one to maximize the infertile woman’s chance of producing one healthy pregnancy and baby.

Are these kinds of abortions going to be curtailed? Inquiring minds want to know.

Debbie Lusignan

That’s right. Who cares about the woman and the emotional and physical effects on her carrying a pregnancy to term that she can’t keep? She should just be a surrogate for those who have the money and resources that she doesn’t and relinquish her child. Poor women don’t deserve assistance and help raising their children as these anti-choice people want to gut every program that provides any assistance, they should just hand over their off spring to the haves. It is a very easy issue to puff ones feathers up and claim compassion. The real life circumstances and realities for women and children don’t factor into the equation, only the high and mighty judgement of people without a clue what the reality means to women.

http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/ Plum Dumpling

These folks suffer from a paraphilia which has features of sado-masochism, voyeurism and exhibitionism. As a set of people they have variously committed arson, bombings, maimings and assassinations. That the government continues to tolerate this kind of criminal stalking behavior is an insult to women. And a criminal lack of concern for the welfare of women and medical professionals. They are America’s terrorists and they have God and erotomania on their side.

CJ99

What they think god is, isn’t real. but that still leaves the problem of the damage their doing to the rest of us right now.

http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/ Plum Dumpling

Correct. Well said.

CJ99

Thats the hidden mantra of the religious reich, profit before people.

Ella Warnock

Because they don’t really want to parent, and they don’t really believe abortion is murder?

Defamate

myintx didn’t even want to donate her uterus to giving the gift of life to 4 snowflake babies:( And yet this was after she assured us that pregnancy was a huge health boon t women..

HeilMary1

I got really attacked yesterday on a conservative web site for mentioning childbirth dangers.

fiona64

Of course they don’t … honestly, it’s like some of them think infants are accessories. I live in a large metropolitan area of Northern California, and a few years back it was downright *trendy* for Caucasian women “of a certain age” to go to China and bring back a female infant to tote around.

CJ99

Parenting is what off shore undocumented & underpaid nannies are for. If they speak up their undocumented status can be used against them.

Amanda Kazarian

A more correct figure is around 200,000 in the U.S. And lot of them get rejected because they are deemed unfit parents. If you can’t get pregnant and people are saying you would do a crappy job anyway, maybe they should take a hint and back off the whole parenting thing.

fiona64

My figures come from the most recent AFCARS report, which cites 106K children for whom the plan is adoption.

Amanda Kazarian

Ah, the article I read was out of date, you’re probably right.

L-dan

“Getting this bill through through the Senate, however, and signed by the president will be a much tougher task,”

Magical thinking from the crew who believe embryos are people, rape makes pregnancy impossible, women over 50 don’t require gynecological care, and somehow using my own pre-tax dollars for abortion counts as a taxpayer subsidy of abortion. Morons and assholes, every last fucking one of them.

CJ99

This is the problem not only in the USA but everywhere on the planet. it’s that those who are in power are uniformly the most unsuited for ruling anything more than a broom closet.

L-dan

Pretty much. In this case, it’s shameless pandering so he can hold up his ‘acheivement’ to the base.

AlanInSF

Rep. Cantor believes abortion is murder — and that murder should be punished by a small tax penalty? What am I missing?

Defamate

Murder should also be punished by…forgiveness…or guilt, don’t you know?

I have been asking every pro-lifer that I come across what the penalty should be for women who abort, and they swear up and down that it’s murder, and then babble about how women will have to ‘answer to god’

Actually wrote and sent off to a movie studio a short sci-fi version (treatment) of that theme, but never heard from anyone. Of course, as a nobody, I don’t have an agent, inside connections or even the professional background to pull that off.

http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/ Plum Dumpling

Did you keep a copy?

HeilMary1

Somewhere in my messy house. But this is a popular theme. A few years ago, a HuffPo writer serialized a similar novel set in the near future with red and blue incubating slave vs. free women states. Her impregnated rape victim heroine was using an underground railroad to flee slave state Virginia for an abortion elsewhere.

My theme focused on an ostracized Catholic terrorist-run dystopian planet that attracted hard-luck unemployed professionals from other planets, and featured a dysfunctional family like mine run by a nasty “sainted” Magdalene Laundry prison matron. The planet was divided by extreme overpopulated poverty and corrupt wealthy clergy and their patron crime families who instigated religious crusade terrorism against nearby “hedonist” planets.

Ella Warnock

I think I’ll kill my annoying leaf blower neighbor. Let’s see how long I can use the “answer to god” excuse, or how amenable his family would be to leaving me to a “final justice.”

CJ99

His undiagnosed psychosis. Apparantly his doctor also missed it.

http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/ Plum Dumpling

Totally out of his cotton picking mind.

L-dan

Also their ‘small government’ apparently needs to remain large enough to investigate every abortion for tax fraud.

HeilMary1

And every flushed tampon for “chemical baby killing.”

RobF

Hundreds of thousands waiting to adopt? I call bullsh*t. These forced-birthers are full of it.

CJ99

the system is full of those who are not caucasian male infants who never get adopted. This march does nothing for them.

Debbie Lusignan

No baby is unwanted, huh? What planet do these people live on? Criminalizing abortion doesn’t STOP abortion, in fact, countries where abortion is illegal have HIGHER abortion rates….. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/abortion-rates-higher-countries-illegal-study_n_1215045.html – There strategy to end legal abortion has been shown to not only work, but increases what they are trying to stop. But, this has nothing to do with love of life and babies….the same people who continually gut out any program that aids vulnerable children and women and worship guns are the most vehemently anti-choice. But, they are really not trying to stop abortions, but control women and view any women who goes against their control as deserving of unsafe abortions and suffering. Hypocrites, narcissistic phonies, and clueless religious zealots who don’t let the realm of reality and the true plight of women and children in this world factor into their thinking.

http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/ Plum Dumpling

Wild applause.

HeilMary1

A perfect exploding head conundrum for these gun and fetus worshipers would be pregnant burglars!

Ella Warnock

If a woman doesn’t “own” the fetus, if it isn’t actually hers and she has no right to evict it, then how does she have the authority to put it up for adoption? Since it isn’t “property,” wouldn’t such a transference of, well, property, be problematic? Or is it only acceptable to treat a fetus as a commodity if she has something that someone else wants?

Whether or not a child is “wanted,” it’s often the pregnancy also which is not desired. If the pregnancy is unwanted and ended, thus ends the question of the “unwanted” child. Antis seem to think that the fact that they want something means they’re entitled to have it.

lol, careful with that line of logic, some idiot repug will say of course you are right, she will have to have some man who owns her give her child up for adoption. Husband, father, brother, some man, not her.
The rest of your statement makes excellent sense to me.

So typical as to be enraging…which I would rather be than scared to death of these idiots. So many of these idiots too.

CJ99

So this douche Cantor wants to tax women for having an abortion with no regard for the poor. What a freakin class act that fool is.

HeilMary1

Can Dems tax Viagra prescriptions?

anja

Cantor’s a hypocritical idiot. He says he “will respect the morals and consciences of millions of Americans, and ultimately will save lives” and yet he blatantly disrespects the morals and consciences of the majority of Americans and goes against the medical advice of nearly every legitimate health organization.

It’s protection from people such as Cantor that the long overdue and much needed Woman’s Health Protection Act was Introduced in November.